Monday, August 4, 2008

Penny for your thoughts

If you go by the Cartman standardized scale of redheads, I'd have to say I mostly lean towards painting DayWalkers. Having that larger range of values and chroma just makes things easier. Paintings a true Gingerkind portrait requires intense scrutiny and subtlety. Here is the conundrum; Red hair has a greater value and chroma range than than both blondes and brunettes, but redheads tend to have less. With flesh tones you can normally get away with literally all the colors, and this includes blues and greens as well if you can keep them fairly neutral. With redheads you have a very shallow analogous pool to play in, from about a warm lavender to a pale orange. This tosses a lot of tricks to create depth out of the window, and you're left with old-school observation and representation. You do still have Pyle's rule of intensity before shadow, and I multiply that by 10 when it comes to redheads or pale flesh tone. I also tried to take it a step further by surrounding any dark area, like the eyebrows, with intense color. This creates a sense of inner glow. Otherwise you approach things as if you're doing a Patrick Nagel print.

dabbs; good to hear from you man. Give a call anytime, the front door is always open for you.

neil; Howard Pyle is a prime number. Unfortunately most of his wisdom has evaporated into the ether of apathy. I have found a few things online, but I tend to copy and squirrel away morsels like that. Far too many cool websites disappear on a regular basis. I'll see if I can scare some of that stuff up.

rico; I guess Howard and I technically were in the same class. Schools back then only had one room for all grades, but us upperclassman definitely wouldn't play kickball with those first-graders. Feel free to check with Jesus and dirt, I think they'll agree.